Your Turn: Oct. 11

October 10, 2017

Photo: Brynn Anderson /Associated Press

Roy Moore, riding his horse to vote in Gallant, Ala., defeated a primary candidate backed by President Donald Trump for the U.S. Senate. A reader sees similarities between Moore and firebrand Texas politicians.

Roy Moore, riding his horse to vote in Gallant, Ala., defeated a...

The crusade begins

Republicans in Alabama, like their brethren in Texas, enjoy electing firebrands into office. Most normal people refer to these characters as wackos or crackpots. Texas has a string of them in office right now. But Alabama refuses to be beat. And, thus, Roy Moore is resurrected from the dustbin of history.

His time as a jurist should have been just the thing to put him in bed with the former game show host turned world leader, except it didn’t. What happened? Close to the end of the showdown between Luther Strange and Roy Moore, Donald Trump had an epiphany. He says, “Maybe I backed the wrong guy”.

Moore will now most likely become the junior senator from the great state of Alabama. This makes the U.S., officially, a Christian nation. Let the tenth crusade begin.

Letters to the Editor

After coach Gregg Popovich expressed his views about Donald Trump recently, I have a feeling your inbox filled up with letters from angry fans shouting that the coach should shut up and tend to basketball. It’s like the old saying about a preacher who dares to stray from religion to politics — “he’s quit preaching and gone to meddling.”

Well, I’m here to state emphatically that Pop is right. Our president must have more critical matters on his agenda (Puerto Rico, North Korea, health care), so why start a fight with black athletes who protest racism by taking a knee during the national anthem? It may seem like a small thing, but it is meaningful to the athletes and presents a small message that, despite all that is good in America, there remains very painful remnants of racism that impact the lives of black Americans in small ways all the time, and in large and very painful ways more often than it should.

Coach Popovich, showing his compassion and humanity, understands these issues and has refused to sweep them under the table. The athletes he coaches are all well paid and can insulate themselves, to a large degree, from racism, but to their credit, they understand this is not so easy for the average black citizen.

I suspect our president, on the other hand, really doesn’t care that much one way or the other, but knows that by turning this into a false claim of disrespect for flag, he immediately stirs up anger in his base. The president, by not acknowledging black athletes have every right to protest peacefully against well-known racist behavior (even though they themselves are insulated), serves only to drive a larger wedge between our citizens and, while politically helpful to him, is not broadly helpful to our nation.